


Heroes Who Are Queer

by writeitininkorinblood



Category: bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 06:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19865032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeitininkorinblood/pseuds/writeitininkorinblood
Summary: Peter's determined to prove to Jason that there are indeed heroes who are queer.





	Heroes Who Are Queer

There was no guarantee Jason would come home. He had as good as broken them up, angry and scared and liable to run. Even as Peter sat at his desk in their room, going over in his mind the most important list he’d ever formulated, he didn’t wholly expect Jason to walk through the door. He could just as easily be spending the night on Nadia’s floor, or talking one of their friends into letting him stay with them. But that would mean fashioning answers to questions that would make him flinch so Peter still had hope that Jason would pick the awkwardness of their room over the interrogation he would face elsewhere.

It was getting late enough that Peter was ready to turn in, but he didn’t want to give up. If he went to sleep and Jason came back then he wouldn’t get the chance to fix this. The look on his face when he’d broken down earlier was something Peter never wanted to see again, and he was almost certain he could help. If Jason would let him.

The door opened just as Peter was about to call the whole plan off, and for a moment he felt a warm wave of familiarity at Jason’s perfect timing. It was clear he’d had been expecting Peter to already be asleep, from the way he froze and took a small step back to the exit. Peter knew he had to act fast if he wanted him to stay.

“Alan Turing,” he blurted out, in lieu of a hello.

It definitely made Jason stop. He blinked, confused enough to be convinced that he’d misheard.

“What?”

Peter took a deep breath and started on his list.  
“Harvey Milk. Christopher Marlowe. Alexander Hamilton and his fellow soldier and ‘friend’ John Laurens. Eleanor Roosevelt. Michelangelo – he painted the Sistine Chapel. Walt Whitman. Freddie Mercury. Virginia Woolf. Tennessee Williams. Oscar Wilde. Emily Dickinson.” He gestured to the copy of Romeo and Juliet from where it had been left from line-learning on their bedside table. “William Shakespeare.”

He was sure he’d forgotten a few, but he was hoping he’d remembered enough names to make his point. They clearly didn’t mean anything to Jason, though. Looking at Peter like he’d gone insane, he didn’t see the connection.

“What about them?” he asked impatiently.

“Heroes who are queer,” Peter said, simple and unashamed as he parroted Jason’s words back to him.

That made an impact. Jason shook his head in disbelief, taking a couple more steps into the room to sit himself on the bed they never used. The bed that was technically Jason’s but just gathered dust unless Nadia came knocking, thrown out of her room by Ivy’s bedfellow of choice, and they had to let her sleep in it while Jason slept on the floor, wishing he could be in Peter’s arms. The only other time it was used was if they were fighting, and seeing Jason sitting on it made Peter’s heart ache.

“Shakespeare wasn’t gay, Peter,” Jason sighed, running a hand through his hair.

Peter rolled his eyes. He knew his queer literary icons, had gone hungrily looking for them in an attempt to reassure himself that his feelings weren’t a unique struggle he had to face alone. Clearly Jason hadn’t engaged in the same activity.

“’And for a woman wert thou first created, Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting. And by addition me of thee defeated’,” he quoted from memory, sonnet 20 burned into his brain.

Silence settled over the room; Jason had nothing to say in response to that. He knotted his fingers together and stared at the floor, looking uncomfortable in his own room but not bolting for the door. Peter couldn’t help but feel like he was getting somewhere. He had to keep going.

“And here,” he jumped up, crossing over to his chest of drawers.

The bottom drawer was full of hoodies that used to be Jason’s but Peter had slowly adopted because they were soft and warm and were the closest thing to a hug from his boyfriend he was going to get in public. Shifting the clothes out of the way, he reached to grab handfuls of the books which paved the bottom of the drawer. He’d never shown them to Jason before. Never shown them to anyone.

“There’s a bookstore in town. I buy them when we visit. I have to throw them away at the end of the school year because I can’t take them home,” he explained, dumping the pile he was holding onto the bed beside Jason.

Jason couldn’t help but look at the titles in shock. _Simon vs The Homosapiens Agenda. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Boy Meets Boy. Proxy. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Red, White and Royal Blue. Two Boys Kissing._ Even when the words alone didn’t make it clear that the content was gay, there were rainbow stickers on the front of half of them or queer couples on the covers. He couldn’t fathom how Peter had had the courage to buy them in person. Half of them would probably get him kicked out of school if any of the teachers found out. One stuck out to him and he reached for it.

“This one seems apt,” he said, wholly void of enthusiasm. 

He held it up so Peter could see the title. _They Both Die at the End_.

“Then don’t read that one,” Peter sighed, snatching it back and tossing it over to his own bed. “Jesus, Jason, do you think we’re the only ones? In all of history? That’s just want they want us to think, but it isn’t the truth. Gay people have always been here and we’re not going away.”

He couldn’t read Jason’s expression. Not because he didn’t recognise the emotion he found there, but because he recognised too many of them at once. Confusion and hope and fear and loneliness and desperation. He couldn’t be certain which one of them was going to come out on top. But then Jason’s fingers inched towards the copy of _The God Box_ on the bed, intrigued, and Peter thought maybe this might have worked.

“Read it. Read any of them. And talk to me about them when you do. Don’t shut me out. Not because of something they tried to make you believe so you’d think less of yourself,” he insisted.

Jason still hadn’t really moved. He seemed overwhelmed by the number of books Peter had kept hidden from him, with more still left in the drawer. The list of names he’d been greeted with still rung in his ears. The chances of all those people, and all these fictional characters whose lives were laid out in front of him, having happy endings were slim to none, but they couldn’t all end in hellfire and damnation and misery. There had to be at least one story where everything ended okay. And if there was one, then maybe there could be another. Jason didn’t need the world. He didn’t need to be famous or rich or even that successful; he’d settle for happy, and happy was Peter at his side and no one judging him when he said ‘I love you’ to a boy.

“Jason, are you even listening to me?” Peter sighed, unsure if this really was getting through to him.

“Yeah,” Jason swallowed thickly, still partially off with his thoughts of the future. “I’m listening.”  
“Good. Now come to bed. Please. It’s late.”

It was a risk. Technically they had broken up. There was every chance Jason would throw all this back in his face and walk out and that would be the end, but Peter had more faith in what they’d built together than that. This room had seen their first kiss and the first time they’d slept together. It had seen fights and reunions and anger and sex and love and guilt and gentle kisses goodnight. Too much of them was written here, inlaid into the walls and the furniture, for it not to remind Jason what exactly it was he had risked his soul for in the first place: the feel of Peter’s hand in his. So when that hand was offered to him again, he took it. He climbed off the bed he hated to sleep in, kicked off his jeans and pulled of his shirt, and crawled into the bed he knew he belonged in. Peter held him close, heartbeat strong under Jason’s ear as he relaxed against the makeshift pillow that provided the soundtrack to his dreams. Jason would ask about the people Peter had given him the names of tomorrow, he’d pick up one of the books that now scattered the other bed. He’d learn. But right now, he was just going to pretend it was all okay.


End file.
